Peter Parker: Friendly Neighborhood Doctor

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[00:02:05] I'm Elise, and in every episode I'll bring you a new martyr and or missionary. The called and the brave. In this episode we're swinging through the life of medical missionary to China, Peter Parker. I really couldn't resist making at least one Peter Parker Spider-Man joke.

[00:02:41] That'll be the last one, I promise. It's just, you don't often get an opportunity like that. But I have had him on my list for a very long time. He has a really interesting timeline, like just in history where he's at, where you have

[00:02:53] this new nation in America. You have the advents of kind of modern missions that have begun not very long before he goes to the field. And then you also have the political situation in China, which we will get into in much more detail later on.

[00:03:08] But Peter Parker was born in Massachusetts in 1804. His parents are Christians, his father is a farmer, and both of his grandparents are devout believers. Now, despite all this, this whole idea of religion was really not his thing.

[00:03:22] He said there was nothing in sermons that gave me pleasure but their clothes. This was anticipated with impatience and heard with joy. And that's how he remained for a great deal of his younger adolescence.

[00:03:33] And then as he became a teenager, there were a few moments where he would hear a little nugget of truth, and then he would be temporarily like prodded and pricked.

[00:03:45] Then he would just kind of go on about his day, which is I think what a lot of us do just in general, not just with religious things. It's human nature. Like for example, you'll think, oh, I need to do X.

[00:03:55] And you'll be like, oh, I feel so guilty about not doing that. And then the moment will pass and you'll move on and then you'll remember it later and the whole thing starts over again.

[00:04:04] So this was very much his spiritual kind of struggle where he would get this moment of guilt and then he would forget about it. And this went on for years. And eventually it just kept building and building and building.

[00:04:15] And he was ashamed to ask his parents, like what do I need to do to become a believer? Which is a strange question when you think about it. His parents were believers. He grew up in the church.

[00:04:24] Like he didn't, but he didn't know there was just this disconnect. And so he decided that he was just going to try to earn it his own way, like be the best person that he could be.

[00:04:33] But then he kept failing because he would make this proclamation and then 10 seconds later he would go and sin. And eventually he tells his parents, like what do I need to do to be saved? And he told his mom, like I've been doing all these things.

[00:04:47] Like why don't I feel any better? And his mom just told him Christ will be a whole savior or he won't be a savior at all. This way of trying to earn your own salvation and having Christ make up for the difference

[00:05:00] is just not going to cut it. And then he goes to bed and he's just crying and pleading and eventually he says God, just take everything that I have and I want to dedicate my life to you.

[00:05:10] And he woke up the next morning and he talks about seeing the vibrancy of color, everything is new and wonderful. And he said anything short of eternity would be insufficient for the outpouring of his praises and thanksgiving to the almighty God.

[00:05:23] He had spent all of these years just wrestling with guilt and imperfections and then trying to earn it. So you can imagine the relief that he feels when he just gives it all to God.

[00:05:32] But as so often happens when he has this moment of conversion and he just feels like every day is going to be like this, but it's not. And very soon the spiritual high is replaced with more of a blah. And he asks this older woman for her advice.

[00:05:47] He says why do I feel this way? And he made it his life's motto from this moment forward to spend or be spent in the service of God, wherever that took him. And with this line of thinking he thought maybe I'll go to the Native Americans.

[00:06:34] He wasn't thinking about a life in medicine or even a life in college because his father was a very poor farmer and there was a lot of debt that was built up because his father

[00:06:43] had this disability, kind of I think a partial paralysis on one side of his body and that put them in a lot of debt trying to get resources for him.

[00:06:52] And there didn't seem to be any kind of avenue where he would be able to go into higher education. But then as Peter is praying about where God wants him to go, he's presented with this opportunity to go to college.

[00:07:04] And he talks to his father about it and his father just begs and pleads with him, don't go, stay with me, you have to work the farm. He's the only son. His sister also has some kind of disability it seems.

[00:07:15] And all of his friends and family are against him going to college. They said well why don't you just become a missionary here in your own backyard? Why don't you become active in church ministry?

[00:07:25] And so many people were against him and there were so many things that just seemed like maybe this was a good fit for him that he almost abandoned his idea of going to college entirely.

[00:07:35] And he had this one friend and this only this one person that supported him and said no, you need to follow God. Like God is telling you to go to college. He's presenting you this opportunity and don't listen to people who are telling you not to.

[00:07:49] Just do it. And one of the things that I loved and also it was a little bit of a chore is that he's a prolific writer. He writes nonstop in his journal and he's very introspective and so he goes through

[00:08:03] his thoughts and he has these different questions that he asks himself about important things in his life and then he'll write like three page responses to one question. And while he's in the midst of this kind of inner conflict, he writes this.

[00:08:18] He's not the most polished workman whose ministries God blesses, but the most humble and faithful. Throughout his life, Peter had absolutely no delusions of grandeur. He didn't think about becoming this great doctor or this great missionary. He just wanted to serve the Lord.

[00:08:34] And he's trying to get some sound advice. And so he goes to his pastor and his pastor dissuades him. He says, you don't really want to go and do anything that's going to take you away from your family. This kind of seems like typical new believer fervor.

[00:08:46] You just need to become an active member in the church and then minister to your neighborhood. And Peter felt that he couldn't minister to his neighborhood because he thought in his head like these people have known me since before I was a believer.

[00:08:58] I'd rather go somewhere where no one has ever heard of me and no one knows what I was like before I became a believer. And he continues praying for God's will and the biggest thing he has to resolve is who's going to take care of his family.

[00:09:12] And it seems like, and this is kind of, it's a little bit difficult to ascertain because sometimes these journals aren't always written the most clearly. But what seems like happened is one of his sisters got married to a man who was able

[00:09:23] to settle the debts of the farm and actually have a little bit left over, which was then split between Peter and his younger sister. Not very much, only about $115. But everything was taken care of and his family would no longer be in debt if he left.

[00:09:40] And he goes back to his pastor and his pastor is relieved because he said, this is my biggest worry. I didn't want you to leave your family and then they end up as paupers. And his pastor has a connection with this small college called the Days Academy and

[00:09:54] he writes this letter saying this guy is really earnest, he's willing, he's a gifted student. Let him into your school on a probationary basis and then see how he does. He's enrolled in March and his father passes away in August.

[00:10:09] Because of all these things that have been done beforehand, the family is okay. They're certainly by no means wealthy, but they're taken care of. And in Peter's own life, you can see that he stewards his money very well.

[00:10:21] It costs 10 cents of postage in order for him to mail his sister and mother. And what he would do is he would write on one side of a letter to his mother and on the other side he would write to his sister.

[00:10:32] In 1827, he switches over to Amherst College and he's there until his junior year. But the school is new and it has a lot of potential, but it's not there yet. And in fact they had I believe four libraries, but you had to sign up for a specific library

[00:10:48] and so you weren't able to get the books that were at any of the other libraries, which is a little strange. He ends up being presented with the opportunity to go to Yale and who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to go to Yale in the 1800s? Incredible.

[00:11:01] And they had a really good medical school and he's thinking about going into medical Being a doctor, but also a missionary. This is a field that is absolutely brand new. Nobody has really done it before.

[00:11:14] There's not anything, there's no handbook on it and he's trying to figure out what that would look like. In his senior year at Yale, he starts ministering to the poor and in public houses and he also

[00:11:27] starts reading the biography of Levi Parsons, who is the very first missionary to Israel. During this time, there's a big resurgence in missions to Israel and he's reading Levi Parsons' letter to his brother about how easy the Chinese language was to learn.

[00:11:42] Now these two are not necessarily, they don't seem to be connected, but somewhere in his biography Levi mentions this to his brother and Parker is very encouraged by this because he actually wanted to go to China, but he was daunted by the language and so he's thinking,

[00:11:56] can I do this? And where would I go? Do I want to go to China? Do I want to go over to Israel? Where does the Lord want me to go? And as he's wrestling with all these questions, I mentioned earlier, he's a very introspective

[00:12:08] guy who likes to journal a lot. And so here's the list of questions that he gave himself and I won't read the answers because that would take a very long time. He's very thorough. He asks, what are my qualifications as it regards natural and acquired ability and piety?

[00:12:23] Two, what are my feelings upon this subject? Three, why prefer a foreign to a domestic mission? Four, what are my motives? By what am I actuated? What was it at first? What is it now? And his answers to these questions go on for several pages.

[00:12:41] And after he's worked all of this out, he's presented with this opportunity to go to this French mission school and he can study in the hospitals there and learn various languages, which would be very helpful for him in the long run.

[00:12:52] And there's a guy that has this connection that says, hey, I can write you a letter. He told his family of his intentions to go to this mission school after graduation. And his sister Catherine said if she were to consult her own feelings, she would say

[00:13:04] to him, stay. But when she thought of the perishing heathen and of the hope that he might do to them, she would say, go. Which is a very different mindset than before when they said, don't even think about leaving the farm. What are you doing?

[00:13:19] And so in his mind, it's settled. And after he graduates, he continues on at Yale Medical School. In Peter's life, he had this custom. At the start of every new term and also on his birthday, he would write an extra long

[00:13:32] journal entry on where his focus was and what was going on in his life and how he was feeling and just kind of pour out his heart to God. And during his new term at Yale Medical School, he writes, oh God, enable me to prove more

[00:13:46] persevering and accurate in my habits of study. Impress upon me more and more the shortness of time remaining for me to prepare and the vastness of that education which I ought to have to go to that empire, accurate knowledge

[00:13:58] of philosophy, natural, medical and moral, of history, literature and science, medicine and surgery, and above all, a sound theology, a true knowledge of the true God and vital and experimental piety.

[00:14:12] This is a guy that really put a lot on himself, but at the same time, his whole focus was to bring glory and honor to God. It seems that very shortly into his study at Yale Medical School that he has decided to go to China.

[00:14:26] And in this endeavor, he applies to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and he writes them a very lengthy message about what he's thinking, how he's feeling, what he thinks he could do and how he would seek to serve God.

[00:14:40] And while he's awaiting their reply, he begins working in prisons and he starts having issues with his own health. And I'm not sure, it's never said and I couldn't find it anywhere, but it seems like he had

[00:14:51] some issue with tuberculosis because he talks about coughing up a little bit of blood and it wasn't that big of a deal, but he had some problems with his lungs and then he coughed

[00:15:00] up a lot of blood and then he goes to the doctor and he has to rest for a while. And he has these health issues that happen on and off throughout his life. And not long after he's mostly amended from this, there's a cholera outbreak that happens

[00:15:13] in the neighboring city and there's rumor that it's going to come closer and closer. And cholera is incredibly deadly, especially before antibiotics. It's still very deadly. It's treatable today as long as you catch it with antibiotics in enough time.

[00:15:26] But in the mid 1800s, there's not a lot they can do. And 11 out of 12 people who contracted it in the neighboring town died. And then as it creeps closer, 29 out of 34 people died. And Parker himself was exposed.

[00:15:40] He was doing ministry and he talks about walking into this house of an Irish family and there's this mother that's dead on the floor and the daughter is weeping over her mother. And in the next room, there's somebody who I believe has already died as well.

[00:15:54] And he's trying to comfort the girl and he says, I don't think she died of cholera. I think she died of exhaustion or fatigue or something, even though he knows she died of cholera, but he's trying to help her feel better.

[00:16:04] And it does seem to encourage this girl's spirits. He prays with them and he leaves the house. And then he himself seems to come down with it because he has this issue of pain in his bowels and he's out for several days.

[00:16:16] And in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, it absolutely wreaked havoc. And he writes that he lost several close friends. In 1833, he is ordained as a Presbyterian minister and he's dedicated as a missionary in the Bleeker Street Presbyterian Church in New York on June 1st, 1834.

[00:16:35] He also receives a letter from his mission board, which states, the medical and surgical knowledge you have acquired, you will employ as you have opportunity in relieving the bodily afflictions of the people.

[00:16:46] You will also be ready as you can to aid in giving to them our arts and sciences, but these you will never forget are to receive your attention only as they can be made handmaids to the gospel.

[00:16:57] The character of a physician or of a man of science, respectable as they are or useful as they may be in evangelizing China, you will never suffer to supersede or interfere with your character as a teacher of religion.

[00:17:10] Your first business will be to acquire both written and spoken languages of the Chinese and see that you acquire them accurately and thoroughly. They expected this to take about two or three years of his time.

[00:17:21] And these mandates laid out by the mission board become an air of contention because they were absolutely impossible for him to follow as we will see. A few days after his dedication as a missionary, he is headed toward China on a ship called the Morrison.

[00:17:37] The ship was named after a missionary some of you may be familiar with, Robert Morrison, who some of you may have heard of. He is considered to be the father of Anglo-Chinese literature and he was a missionary to Macau as well as China.

[00:17:50] Now if you are familiar with his name, you are doing way better than I was a few years ago. I've talked about this before, how I will go places and have no idea of their historical significance to missions whatsoever.

[00:18:03] In 2018, my family was living in China and we decided to take a vacation to Macau. And I actually have pictures of the Protestant cemetery where Robert Morrison was buried and had absolutely no idea until I honestly think it was earlier this year.

[00:18:20] Which is much to my chagrin but not uncommon. So anyway, there you have it. After a few days of seasickness, Peter Parker recovers and he begins leading evening worship in the cabin and he's preaching every Sunday to the passengers and crew.

[00:18:34] He also starts studying Chinese using a grammar book. 74 days into the voyage, he starts a bible class and while they're on the voyage, he is needed as a doctor over 20 times. And he mentions in his letters about bloodletting a man who had rheumatoid arthritis and that

[00:18:48] led me on a whole rabbit trail of bloodletting which lasted a lot longer than you would think it would last. It actually didn't quit until a little bit into like basically the 1920s and there's still certain areas of the world where they practice it.

[00:19:03] And it's interesting, it's gross but it's interesting. On October 26th, 1834, this is four months later, he lands in Guangzhou which is a port city in southern China. It's south of Shanghai and it's actually really close to Macau.

[00:19:19] And throughout his time, he's actually bouncing quite a bit between Singapore and Macau and Guangzhou. And immediately when he lands in Guangzhou, he's talking to somebody who says, this is an incredible need we have. We need doctors and I could have you 100 patients in absolutely no time.

[00:19:35] And he starts thinking, oh my goodness, what do I need to do? Should I put off studying language in order to help people? Like what do I need to do? He was overwhelmed by what he was seeing on the ground and he writes in a letter to his

[00:19:46] sister. And you can see what a real dilemma he's in because he says, well if I study language for two or three years, I'm leaving these people out to dry for two or three years. And in China at this point, there's a lot of foreign distrust.

[00:20:46] There's a lot of limitations on what you can do as a foreigner. In fact, not long before this, you weren't even allowed to teach a foreigner how to speak Chinese at all. So this is all very new ground.

[00:20:55] You have these political tensions, you have this distrust of people, you have just tons of things that are working against your ministry. And he finds out from somebody that there's actually a lot easier access to ministering to the Chinese in Singapore.

[00:21:09] And so he heads out there and he opens up a dispensary and he's treating over a thousand people in six months. And he's working day in and day out and he has no time to breathe.

[00:21:19] He's trying to learn Chinese, but also there's just so many people to see. And he writes in his journal, is this the life of a missionary? If so, it is an unsettled life. And you can just see he's just feeling very overwhelmed and he's unable to even attend

[00:21:32] church. He's just so busy. He's not even able to go to the gym. He's just so busy. And he's trying to figure out how to help Parker because there's such a distrust of foreigners, but there's also such a great medical need.

[00:21:57] And there's this, even in the housing situations, like if you are Chinese, you don't enter the foreign housing and vice versa. It's just entirely separated. But Oliphant has this idea that if he can use one of his warehouses to kind of set up

[00:22:11] this hospital and the Chinese could come to it in kind of a sneaky way where they wouldn't be seen by others and people wouldn't be able to gossip about them, then that might work better than publicly advertising this hospital in more of the foreign district of town.

[00:22:27] And so the hospital opened roughly a year after Parker had arrived. And it was established primarily to treat eye ailments and it was designed so that you could comfortably seat 200 people and also allow for 40 people to be able to convalesce during inpatient procedures.

[00:22:42] But after the hospital got started, they quickly realized that there are so many other ailments and while they primarily treated eyes, they had to expand into other things. And when they first started, they first opened, their very first patient was an elderly woman

[00:22:57] with cataracts because everybody else was too afraid to be seen. And soon the word began to spread that the services were free, that the doctors were competent and before long they were handling thousands of cases a year and Parker had

[00:23:11] trained a small team of people to assist him in the surgeries. And so often we want to focus on the accomplishments of one person and that doesn't mean these weren't incredible accomplishments. But I think the beauty of the church is how many people come together to make something

[00:23:26] possible. From the availability of the ship that Parker came over on, to the factory he was provided, to the funds that were given by people in order to make the hospital work and be able to provide services free of charge.

[00:23:40] It's an absolutely beautiful thing to see the people of God come together to accomplish the work of God. Once upon a time in medieval England, there was a young king who would do just about anything for his favorite knight. They were inseparable.

[00:24:07] With love at the front of a king's mind, instead of war or ambition, you'd think the kingdom would be in for a golden era of peace. But England is headed for the most catastrophic collapse seen for hundreds of years. The saga continues.

[00:24:21] Join me, Dan Jones, on This Is History – A Dynasty to Die For. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:25:10] I want to backtrack a little bit just because I think it's incredible, the things they had to overcome in order to successfully operate this hospital. Number one, there is no anesthesia at this point and they're performing a lot of intensive

[00:25:48] surgeries and just think about on a small scale undergoing cataract surgery without the help of anesthesia. Women were also legally unable to enter any of the buildings owned by foreigners, but there was a loophole.

[00:26:02] If they were brought by their cousin or their brother or their father, then they could enter, but by themselves they were not allowed to enter. Another thing important to note that I've hit on a little bit, but China is incredibly

[00:26:14] any kind of foreign interference and it makes it very difficult. Not just, I mean imagine you don't want to go to somebody for a tumor because you're afraid of becoming seen as someone who associates with foreigners. How much less likely are you to be open to the gospel?

[00:26:31] So there's a lot of work that has to be done in order to enable people to come to a place where they can hear the gospel without having all of these guards put up.

[00:26:43] And the hospital was instrumental in softening the hearts of the Chinese who were in the area and enabling them to hear the gospel without all of these prejudices and without all these guards up.

[00:26:55] As I was researching for this episode, I found some critiques of Parker that I think are very unfair. Number one, they were saying he had no converts. And number two, they were saying, oh, he's pretty much just a doctor and that was his primary focus.

[00:27:10] In one example, they said, well, think about Hudson Taylor. He did exactly what Parker did, but he did it so much better and with so much more success. But this is an entirely unfounded, unjust critique of Parker because he had to lay that

[00:27:23] foundation and also because his original purpose never wavered. He writes this, China contains 333 million souls, but the land is yet to be possessed by Christ. To be the scene of revivals of religion and of numerous assemblies of humble worshippers.

[00:27:41] The barriers will all be taken away and civilization will scatter its blessings throughout the land, traversing her territory with roads, railroads, her harbors and rivers will be navigated by steamboats. Her laws will be modified by that foundation of all laws, the Bible.

[00:27:56] The female sex will be elevated and treated not as slaves, but as the helpmates and companions of man. The time is coming when her people will be delivered from their burdens of perpetual disease and will they will no longer be debarred the privileges of education and the pleasures

[00:28:11] of intellectual life. And when under the rule of Jesus, China will be wonderfully different from the China of today. His hope and prayer was that one day China would become a Christian nation. And in this goal, he worked himself to the bone despite his own ill personal health.

[00:28:26] He was not a healthy man and he preached the gospel whenever he was able. And in his hospital, the gospel was shared with his patients repeatedly and they were able to be prayed with and cared for.

[00:28:38] As the hospital became more well known, a lot of the Christian foreigners in the city and around the surrounding areas said, what can we do if we had more things like this? We had more medical missions facilities set up.

[00:28:51] And they came together and founded the Medical Mission Society in 1838. And it was the very first medical society in the world. It was created to help fund other mission hospitals and to train Chinese in Western medicine.

[00:29:04] With its establishment, little hospitals began to pop all over the permitted areas and trained doctors were sent out by various missions organizations. In fact, a naval inspector for hospitals noted that the medical missionaries in their frequent

[00:29:16] familiar discourse with the afflicted possess an advantage that the average man cannot attain. Another man talking about one of the medical facilities that had been established due to the mission said, I am happy to be able to state that our hospital is a thoroughly Christian institution.

[00:29:32] Every helper is so far as we are able to judge a genuine disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and in perfect sympathy with the higher aim of the establishment from end to end and from top to bottom. The atmosphere of the hospital is a purely religious one.

[00:29:46] So actively engaged are the assistants and making known the truth to the patients that it is almost impossible for anyone to spend their three or four days within the building without obtaining a fair knowledge of the fundamental truths of the gospel.

[00:29:59] I never entered the ward without feeling that the institution is a great spiritual power and that it is destined to accomplish a mighty work for God in the center of China.

[00:30:09] But with all this work going on, there's something that comes in the way to kind of halt everything that's being done and that's the outbreak of the first opium war in 1839. The British are importing and trading tons and tons of opium and it's creating an epidemic.

[00:30:25] It's straining the economy and it's creating a mass of opium addicts throughout China. And the British were like, well, why don't we just legalize it and then tax it? And the Chinese said, no, this is a terrible idea.

[00:30:38] And Viceroy Lin, who was responsible later for cracking down on opium, sent a letter to Queen Victoria asking her to stop the trade peacefully. Now, supposedly she never saw this letter and tensions only began to escalate.

[00:30:51] And Viceroy Lin confiscates over two million pounds of opium and destroys it there in the city of Guangzhou. With this escalation, war breaks out and Parker is detained with the other foreigners. Many of them, especially the English, had already fled to different areas.

[00:31:07] They fled to Macau and then when that was kind of closer, they just ended up just kind of pushing themselves further and further away. And it's an odd imprisonment. And he's one of the only foreigners left in China at this point.

[00:31:20] And his hospital is officially closed, but he's still treating people. And he's able to study with a tutor because he had more free time and his written and spoken Chinese just improved greatly. But eventually he is compelled to leave China as things just continue to escalate.

[00:31:36] And he leaves in 1840 and he took his tutor with him so that he can continue to study while he's away. And he comes back to America as a famous man and he meets the president Van Buren and the

[00:31:46] future president John Tyler and the new Secretary of State Daniel Webster. And he urges them to set up trade relations with China and to appoint someone as an ambassador to China. And while he's in the US, he attends a series of medical lectures in Philadelphia in order

[00:32:01] to get up to date with the latest in medical knowledge and procedures. Parker is never idle. He meets and marries Harriet Webster in March of 1841. And then he travels to Europe where he meets many famous heads of state, including the

[00:32:14] King of France who refuses to support Parker's medical mission efforts. But it's probably just a Protestant Catholic thing, nothing particularly personal. The war ends in 1842. Britain is victorious. They just have better ships. They have better weapons. They're better prepared. Their soldiers are just more trained.

[00:32:31] And this creates the first of several unfair treaties. And it kind of goes downhill for China from there. At the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, Britain acquires access to five port cities, increased trade, and they also acquire Hong Kong.

[00:32:48] Peter Parker and his wife arrive back in China right before the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He reopens the hospital and he introduces anesthesia. First they start out with sulfuric ether, then they switch that out in a couple years for chloroform.

[00:33:02] Worship services were held at the hospital every Sunday. And here I want to segue into a little historical nugget that I find just fascinating. There's this painter, his name is Lam Qua. He's famous for being a portrait artist during the Qing Dynasty.

[00:33:16] And supposedly he studied under George Chenery, although there's some debate in the artistic world about that. Chenery himself denied it, but according to Parker, he seemed to think that Lam Qua had. It's a strange thing. Anyway, Lam Qua's nephew ends up studying under Parker to become a doctor.

[00:33:34] And in fact, he heads up the hospital when Parker is away. Lam Qua is a phenomenal portrait artist. And in his younger years, he actually wanted to be a doctor. So he's a little bit like, oh man, my nephew is living my dream.

[00:33:47] But Parker sees a possibility with Lam Qua's talents. They can take a before and after portrait of unusual medical cases. Many times these patients that would come in would have these tumors that were growing

[00:33:58] on their bodies for over 30 years, which would result in some very well grotesque medical anomalies. But it's also fascinating from a medical perspective. And so he commissioned Lam Qua to paint a series of portraits before and after surgery.

[00:34:14] And those portraits are actually still available in the Peter Parker collection. I believe it's held by Yale somewhere. Anyway, very interesting stuff. And if you're curious, you can Google it and look at the images at your leisure. It's fascinating and it's morbid.

[00:34:28] Shortly after Parker arrives back in China, his mission board contacts him and says, you're just not doing enough. You haven't been able to prioritize evangelism. You're not handing out religious literature. You have no converts to show for your work. So therefore, we're letting you go.

[00:34:44] And they cut his funding pretty much immediately. And he's unable to care for himself because he didn't take a dime from the hospital. Anything that came in was meant to be used to treat the patients and provide care for them free of charge.

[00:34:58] And instead, he reaches out to some of the members of the cabinet in the States. And he says, hey, can I work in some kind of diplomatic capacity in order to support myself and represent American interests abroad?

[00:35:10] And he was granted the position of Chinese secretary to the mission under the first ambassador to China, Caleb Cushing. And the first order of business was to negotiate a treaty where they would have access to all

[00:35:21] the port cities the British had access to, as well as the ability to build and operate hospitals, schools, and places of worship. And the United States also agreed to support China's prohibition against opium, which was something the British were pushing for insanely hard.

[00:35:39] Parker's reputation was a key factor in the success of the treaty. The relationships he had established through his work at the hospital and the Medical Mission Society meant that he had a very favorable relationship with many Chinese merchants and officials.

[00:35:52] A few weeks later, he received news that James Buchanan, American secretary of state, had appointed him as secretary and Chinese interpreter to the mission of the United States in China. In his letter to Buchanan, he said he would accept the position as long as it was compatible

[00:36:07] with my continued efforts in my missionary capacity, and that he would endeavor to discharge his duties with fidelity and with such ability as I possess ever watchful for the interests and honors of both countries.

[00:36:20] He held his position for nine years and actually served as the acting ambassador on many occasions when the official one was away. He served during the Taiping Rebellion and spoke out strongly against the exploitation of Chinese laborers, a practice he likened to the African slave trade.

[00:36:37] In 1855, he left China due to his wife's poor health, and he never expected to return. Instead, when he arrived back in the US, he was immediately given the job of ambassador to China, and his first official act was to crack down on this coolie trade or the exploitation

[00:36:52] of Chinese laborers. And he wrote, all citizens of the United States are to desist from this irregular and immoral traffic. He warned that all American citizens who participated in this trade would lose the protection of their government. Now his time as an ambassador is a little bit controversial.

[00:37:11] When things start heating up, kind of leading up to the second Opium War, China is not amenable to any kind of negotiations. And Parker's idea was to strong arm China into accepting negotiations through various

[00:37:24] means, one of which was taking and holding Taiwan until they came to the table. That was rejected and thankfully kept America out of the second Opium War. But when the Opium War was over and the dust had settled, a lot of the negotiations that

[00:37:37] he had argued for came to pass, which included the opening of new cities for foreign residents and the right to travel in the interior and religious toleration for Chinese converts and protection for foreign missionaries.

[00:37:51] After a change in US administration, he was relieved of his duties and came back to the US, never to return to China. And he spent the last 30 years of his life living in Washington DC.

[00:38:02] He served on the board of his old missions agency, which tells you something happened that cleared the air and they were able to come to terms, which is good. He also served as the vice president of the American Evangelical Alliance and was a regent of the Smithsonian Institute.

[00:38:15] He was also close friends with Abraham Lincoln, who would visit often and love to play with their only son, Peter Jr., who was born 18 years into Peter's marriage when he was 55 years old. Parker died in 1888 at the age of 83 with his wife by his side.

[00:38:32] A few years before he left China during all the political tension brewing on the eve of the second Opium War, he wrote this, To tens of thousands of Chinese I have been permitted to preach the gospel of salvation

[00:38:45] and to 52,500 afflicted with all the physical ills of our common humanity, directly and indirectly, I have been permitted to administer, with a degree of success, the demands praised to him who is the giver of all health and life. A year later he wrote,

[00:39:01] The crowning joy of the retrospect arises from what I may have been permitted to do directly or indirectly for the cause of my Redeemer in China, and the comforting hope that my tears, prayers and preaching of the gospel have not been in vain.

[00:39:22] Peter Parker was a pioneer in many regards. He is the first medical missionary, he was only 30 years out from the advents of modern missions, and he went to a politically tense and religiously hostile country. It's said that he opened China at the point of a lancet.

[00:39:38] He paved the way for Hudson Taylor who landed in Guangzhou four years after Parker left and was able to take up residence in the dispensary that Parker had created all those years before. David Livingston himself wanted to go to China and serve as a medical missionary before

[00:39:52] God sent him to Africa. Parker's love for China and his dedication to God is undeniable, and his influence in the lives of the missionaries who came after him is incalculable. He lived out the life mission he had made as a young man and a new believer, to spend

[00:40:07] and be spent in service to God. As always, thank you for listening to Martyrs & Missionaries, I'm Elyse.